After dropping Mrs Dragonspeed at the airport, I headed out to Westham Island for a nice walk around the Reifel Bird Sanctuary… in the COLD winter weather. (Cold in Vancouver means a bit below 0C ) Some of the highlights are here

Others too, but the Hoodie was my takeaway victory of the day. These guys have always stayed at the OTHER end of ponds from where I am shooting until this most recent time. Here are the shots from the day.

Out at Reifel, the marsh wrens were building and calling like mad. Many of the Northern ducks were already flying away, but a few other regulars also made an appearance, resulting in an interesting walk.

I stopped to take a few shots and then while I was looking to try to shoot the Brant out past the flats, the eagle starts to fly! Someone said something and I turned around to get a shot of him passing by. He swooped down and tried to pick a little male Bufflehead out of the ditch next to the dyke.

After some time on his pole, he came in for a last pass. He was like a low level bomber hugging the contours of the dyke – probably only a few feet off the ground. He was definitely looking for a stealth attack (too close to the ground and too fast – all my shots of this ended up with nicely focused grass and a blur for a bird). The duck was wise to this one too… a quick submerge and it was safe again. The eagle returned to his pole.

At this point the duck flew off and I continued my walk. Apparently hunting is a lot harder than the adult eagles make it look. It seems it just wasn’t that little Bufflehead’s day to be dinner. I hope you enjoyed the hunt vicariously with me 🙂

As you can tell, the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary is quickly becoming one of my favourite places to go spend 4-6 hours wandering around with a lens :) Yesterday I went out with Mrs Dragonspeed. She used the 100-400 most of the time while I shot with the 70-200 + 2X converter. That being said, I even slapped the 2X onto the 100-400 to get a couple of the shots below (1 and 5) for 800mm of manual focusing goodness on the 7D

It was forecast to be clear, and for a change the weather man was right! It was a cool clear, crisp day. It made for some good shooting. Here are a few from the walk.